4. Mind is split
‘My one regret in life is not being born as somebody else’
Woody Allen
The split between phenomena and the noumenon is not just for the world ‘out there’. It is not simply a boundary imposed on us in terms of getting empirical observations of the world. The split continues on from the objective world into the subjective world of consciousness. This is not the same as the splits identified by psychology such as ego, super ego and id or consciousness, sub-consciousness and collective consciousness. All of these divisions of the mind have their hidden aspects. Some of the psychological issues will be considered below, as these have a bearing on the development of the discussion within this work. But the phenomenon-noumenon split within the mind is treated as a further and distinct issue from the psychological concerns. As was observed in the previous chapter, modern philosophy — from the post-Kantian philosopher Schopenhauer onwards — has regarded subjects as having ‘first person privilege’, and with Schopenhauer at least, this is seen as some kind of inner knowledge of the workings of the noumenon. Effectively, my will or volition is not really my own, it is the noumenon working through me.
The difficulty with Schopenhauer’s first person privilege is that it might suggest that any and every thought and desire arising within me is actually the noumenon. Indeed, later philosophers, while dropping reference to the noumenon, have nonetheless taken up the idea that subjective thought and meaning are paramount in our view of reality and thus various forms of what we can loosely term ‘new age’ belief have been spawned.
However, a thought arising in consciousness is after all a phenomenon and therefore if we are to be consistent with our noumenon-phenomena split, then we would have to discard conscious thoughts as being directly attributable to the noumenon. A less direct approach is called for, as described below.
One of the most famous statements in philosophy is of course the ‘Ergo Sum’: ‘I think, therefore I am’. Whilst not entirely new in Western thought, René Descartes’ exposition of the idea really became the decisive point at which the subject/object split was adopted wholesale in Western thought. Being a subject moreover was not considered a complex issue. A thinking being was simply ‘clear and precise’. Jean Paul Sartre, when commenting on the ergo sum, observed that the one doing the thinking is not necessarily the one observing the thought. He did not however comment further on this matter, but actually he hit the nail on the head with that observation. We must turn to Eastern thought and the idea of the ‘witness’ to help us to understand further.
In meditation, the process often known as ‘the witness’ is simply to stand back and to observe thoughts arising in the mind. A similar experience occurs when we find ourselves waking up in a strange place. The bed and immediate surroundings and sensations are brought into consciousness, but the unfamiliarity results in a few moments when we are unaware of who we are. These are usually moments of some alarm, as we struggle to find some reference of familiarity in order to ‘ground’ the self once again in the world. Essentially, it calls into question the nature of the self. If I can be fully conscious, yet unaware of who I am, then perhaps consciousness resides outside of myself or at least has levels or facets that can act discretely or independently. We might describe this as the noumenal consciousness, or our essence emanating from mystery. Just as we drew back from equating value with ultimate reality, I also want to draw back from equating all aspects of volition — all that might be described as ‘the will’ — with essence. Essence is mystery, and that is all that can be said.
If all is one, then of course, the witness and the self (or indeed essence and personality) are actually not separate. Some authors prefer to say that the self does not really exist, and that therefore all the problems relating to suppression and the sub-conscious are simply delusional. Only the noumenal consciousness is really real. We are however defined by the boundaries in which our lives are lived and to just ignore selves because ultimately they don’t exist is I think not the best approach. In later chapters then, we will explore the self within the very deliberate context of the human economy.
We have noted already that to regard a ‘subject’, an individual thinking person, as a simple and clear concept, is to oversimplify. The process by which a person becomes a subject is fraught with difficulties. The splitting off of some aspects of the self into sub-conscious denial has serious consequences for the way we operate in the world.
Feminist author Grace Jantzen explains that Lacan assumes that language as constructed is essentially masculine. Women therefore effectively have no voice. Furthermore, language results in an endless deferral of desire (which Lacan describes as ‘jouissance’) and as being forever deferred. There is an endless search for substitute gratification. For Lacan, as for Freud, the phallus is the ‘universal signifier’.
The split then, within the mind, in terms of a split that divides off the unconscious by the suppression of desire, has multiple consequences — a denial of genuine desire, the masculinity of Western thought, the suppression of the female, and the obsession with death. We will revisit these themes in later chapters. Jantzen and other feminist writers clearly feel that they must address these matters directly if they are to challenge the dominant mindset of psychology and find an alternative ‘symbolic’ — that is, a symbolic not related ultimately to the phallus. By way of a lead into this Jantzen turns to Levinas. She says:
‘…whereas in psychoanalytic theory…speech and the whole of the cultural symbolic comes under the…phallus as the universal…signifier, Levinas situates speech otherwise. Speech as he understands it is not dominated by the phallus but as a response to the face, a face whose ‘first word’ is ‘Thou shalt not kill.’
Levinas’ work still presents difficulties for Jantzen, but the idea of embodiment (here exemplified in relating to others via the face) is very significant. Again, we will take up this theme later in the work.
Lawrence Cahoone (in The Dilemma of Modernity) identifies what he calls the ‘three pernicious dichotomies’ – the split between subject and object (mind and body, inner and outer), the split between the individual and the individual’s relationships with others and the split between the world of human culture and the natural realm of biophysical processes. The last few chapters have looked at various splits in our world view, and the subject/object split has been a primary one. Cahoone’s other splits, or dichotomies, relate closely to one another - more closely than might first appear. Hopefully this will become clear as the argument progresses and we will revisit Cahoone’s dichotomies at the end of the work.
